


Mad Girl's Love Song

by kocham



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-15
Updated: 2007-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocham/pseuds/kocham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)</i>
</p>
<p>Luna in the Malfoy cellar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad Girl's Love Song

In the lightless, timeless space of the cellar, Luna sometimes wonders if she truly is mad, the way everyone has always whispered she is: and it's a strange thought, this, because she has never really listened to much that others have to say about her, preferring instead to wander through life with a sort of abandoned wonder that her parents worked to instil within her from her earliest recollections. She heard the whispers almost from the moment she arrived at Hogwarts, but she was able to push them into a background fuzz of noise, mostly easily ignored, because the world she imagined and dreamed of and believed in and lived inside of was oh, somuchbigger (& then there was Neville, who shrunk bits of her world into something comforting and comfortable and lovely, like one of those overstuffed, velvety armchairs that you drag closer to a fire than is advisably intelligent because that makes them all the more ideal for a winter's day daydream; or like a recess at the foot of a tree, in among the roots which seem to make space amongst themselves to fit you inside, and you sit in the shade and soak in the coolness of the dirt and hide from the anger of the summer sun; or like Neville, like himself exactly, who always knew precisely what not to say when she'd confided her fears and dreams and rare moments of doubt in him, instead holding her hand a little tighter, or drawing her into his arms and widening the borders of the world by creating a space where nothing could harm her everagain).

Here, in the dark, the world has shrunk to this: to this black to which her eyes never really adjust; to the outline of Mr. Ollivander, who exists as a voice embodied in a shadow blurred into shadows; to shrieks and screams and shouts and whimpers of anger and fear and frustration and grovelling in what her wrecked logic says is the room above her, but seem at times to come from everywhere at once, from before and behind and below and maybe even from inside herself; to daynights and nightdays and no mornings or afternoons or dawns or dusks, and maybe she's only been here for three days, or maybe she's been here three months, some sort of unmeasurable time punctuated by the sound of a small door-within-a-door opening and closing, and dry bread and a flask of water falling. 

Sometimes others come, are brought, thrown into the cellar and their names are familiar to her, sometimes, but there is never anyone she knows well, never anyone who knows her, never anyone who can confirm that the world that only exists now in what she hopes are her memories ever existed at all. And sometimes the door, the whole door, opens and someone shouts with a lantern and comes in to cast a threatening voice into the corners, and Luna's eyes reflex against the light and shut and will only open again in slits until the others are taken away and she is left once again in the dark. She hears the shouts and the grovelling and the screams interspersed always by terrible laughter, and the others don't return, and once, they take Mr. Ollivander away, and she is left entirely alone in the silence tortured by sound, and she thinks that or and but maybe, maybemaybe this is all that has ever existed. The door opens again though, this time, and a body is shoved in, down the stairs, and she crawls over to it, grasping Mr. Ollivander and cradling him in her arms like a life-sized doll and managing to stumblingly carry him over to where she knows a pile of rags exists, and he clings to her, whimpering like a child and she soothes him, stroking his hair and face and arms and murmuring the songs she thinks she has known since before she was born, and eventually he falls asleep, or loses consciousness; Luna isn't really certain. (She nestles him into the rag-blankets, stands, backs away from him until he is blurred entirely into the shadow, and her back is against one of the dank walls, and everything inside her constricts until she crumples up suddenly, falling into a pile of rag-Lunas, and it is only the wet falling onto her arms that makes her realise she is weeping, and for justonetinymoment, she feels alive and the world opens up wide before her and belief sparks inside of her again before she falls once more into the enveloping, threatening darkness and is crushed. Subconsciously, she is very careful never to cry again.)


End file.
